Discussion Papers 2016

CIRJE-F-1025

"Impact assessment of credit program for tenant farmers in Bangladesh: Evidence from a eld experiment"

Author Name

Hossain, Marup, Mohammad Abdul Malek, Amzad Hossain, Hasib Reza and Shakil Ahmed

Date

October 2016

Full Paper

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Remarks

Abstract

We study the role of agricultural credit on productivity and livelihoods of small, marginal, and landless tenant farmers based on a randomized control trial (RCT) field experiment in Bangladesh. Twenty percent of the eligible households from the treatment group participate in the credit program and utilize sixty percent of their loans for agricultural purposes. Results show that access to credit increases adoption of modern seed varieties, productivity, and farming income in the treatment group. We find that impacts are heterogeneous over households0 headship, tenancy status, and farm size. We also examine distributional impacts using quantile regressions and find that impacts of the credit are mostly concentrated in the upper tail of the distributions.

Keywords: Access to credit, tenant farmers, productivity, income diversification